Helena weekly herald., 1887-11-24
IN A CHINESE YAAMEN.
A BOAT RIDE THROUGH A LONG
AND DEVIOUS WATERWAY.

The Chinese House Boat the Most Per-
feet Thing of Its Kind-Picturesque
Country Bridges-A Rural Family-An.
cestral Graves-A Duck Farm.
Through consular friend, who in the
course of some official work had made the
acquaintance and gained the deep friendship
of a civil magistrate, had at last the good
fortune to visit mandarin's family in a ver-
liable yaamen in one of the oldest cities of
interior China Our mandarin host sent a
boat full of mis- servants down to the treaty
port to give us his greetings and to escort US
through the long and devious waterway of
river, creek and canal that led to the hoary
walls of Chang Sha. There were three for
eigners in the party and it took two boats to
carry us in proper state, with a third and
smaller boat for our own servants and a
fourth boat filled with the mandarin's con-
tingent.
The Chinese house boat is a most perfect
thing of its kind, with its carved, gilded and
most beautifully vanished woodwork and its
many ingenious contrivances. In country
where there are no roads and no land We
hicles save the sedan chair or the more recent
wheelbarrow, with its creaking axle and un-
certf IN balance, all travel is by the network
of creeks and canals that connect the great
waterways Of the empire The meanest
Chinaman can pole his skiff free and unmo-
Tested from Canton to Peking and from the
seashore to the Great Wall over a system of
water routes that were old when western ma
tions were in their first youth. The house
boats evolution from the small sampan, in
which a whole Chinese family lives, to the
beautifully fitted homes in which the foreign
ers take their pleasurings and men go Off on
long hunting trips, was gradual thing. Ono
carries all the servants and the whole house.
hold equipment on boat trip, and with reg
ular beds and baths, the procession of courses
and elaborate dinners, the life is little
changed and has no privations.
OFF WITH THE TIDE
Starting off with the tide we went up the
river at a speed that gave the lowdah, or
skipper, nothing to do but order the course
steered with the large oars at the stern, but
in the narrower reaches of the creeks and
canals the crew sculled with the big oars and
put up the sails to catch any favoring breath
of breeze. We gathered in one boat to have
o'clock tea and for the great ceremony of
dinner, and at night dropped off to sleep in
our comfortable state rooms to the regular
thump of the oars and the swish of water,
varied by strange rappings on the bottom of
the boat as bed of heavy topped water
plants slipped under the keel.
When we came out on the little decks of
our boats in the dewy hours, the string of
brown boats with their gilded portals
and red curtains made a pretty picture
under the edge of a grassy bank, with
tall trees reaching their branches half
across the narrow waterway A few farm
houses were near the banks, and the place
was a water cross roads, where two canals
made right angles. Its name of Sanchow,
three bridges, was apt enough, as the three
high, narrow stone bridges were all near to-
gether. These country bridges are the most
picturesque things in China, line of narrow
hewn stones being laid on stone posts that
hold the footway firmly against all time.
The massive posts and the long stones are
often carved with Chinese characters, but the
wonder of them is chiefly how they were ever
laid there and the stone piles driven in the
mud without steam or mechanical appliances
of any consequence.
When we scrambled up the banks and wan
dered through the wet grass toward the first
farm house, the rural family came half way
gathered wild flowers by the handful. By
the aid of our interpreter we went through
conversation with the evident head farmer,
two assistants and four female relations, with
six children staring like little statues
LOST IN ABATEMENT.
We must have been curiosities to these ru-
raj wives in their trousers and loose coats, as
their first sight of foreign women, and We
stood like milliners' dummies and let them
walk around and touch our dresses and finally
lose themselves in amazement at the puzzle OK
the second skin, or gloves, on our hands.
The graves of their ancestors rose in hum.
mocks in the midst of the field of dwarf cot
ton around the i'll kept farm house, as the
Chinaman buries his ancestor in whatever
spot an omen may indicate to him, and all
his thrift does not conquer this superstition
that dots all the cultivated fields with burial
mounds. The tops Of the plants Of the water
chestnut rose from an acre of muck and wa
ter, and the farmer, after digging to his ell
bows in the mud and bringing up only green
tubers, informed us that ''they would not be
ripe until old Father Frost came along"
One of his assistants sat contentedly down
on the wet grass and began chewing the end
of three foot stalk of sugar cane for his
breakfast, and we went out on one of the
three bridges and watched duck farmer
polling along in a fiat bottomed skif and
driving his flock TO pasture. Three hundred
and more ducks quacked at sight of the
strange figures on the bridge, and beat the
water with their wings in their hurry to get
past, while the duck farmer hooked in a few
stray birds with his crook and evidently
thought his view of the curiosities dear one,
when his ducks left the water and scrambled
wildly up the banks and into the fields
We aoated slowly in our boats up the creek
for the next few hours, watching cane fields,
millet and cotton fields. farm houses and the
innumerable bridges, before which the masts
and sails were unhinged and laid fiat on the
cabin roof, and at last we saw the venerable
gray brick walls of Chang Sha.-"Ruhamah"
in Globe Democrat.
A Domestic Fowls Dictionary.
Tr-ka-do- dle-do-o-o-Challenge of male
Tuck, tuck tuck-Food call of male.
R-a-r-r-e-Announcing presence of hawk.